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Justice hits eBay for $59M for selling obviously illegal pill-counterfeiting gear


You don't need to resort to the dark web to find your illicit pill counterfeiting presses and molds. Just go to eBay and you can get one like new for a

The DOJ news release notes that many of these buyers were subsequently prosecuted; I’ve asked for more information on that, since it sounds like eBay may have unwittingly acted as a huge honey pot. eBay contended in a statement that it had taken “actions” to remove these devices “prior to any request from the DOJ or other authorities, and years before the government turned its attention to these products.” It’s hard to square this with the settlement, which states that the relevant time period was late 2015 to the present, during which time eBay did not properly record or report sales of the machines, despite selling thousands of commercial-grade presses to residential addresses — and sold counterfeit stamps and such to the same buyers. Whatever eBay’s “actions” were, they amounted to less than the authorities would prefer, and to avoid any admission of wrongdoing (as is tradition) they have agreed to pay $59 million and “enhance its compliance program with respect to its prohibited and restricted items policy.”

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